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  • 3 hours ago
In 2016, Opera North’s extraordinary journey through Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen came full circle, in a series of six full Ring cycles. Comprising the four operas which make up Wagner’s epic masterpiece, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, more than 15 unforgettable hours of music and passion are now also available online, in full, for free.
Transcript
00:05For people who binge on all sorts of other things now, this is the ultimate week-long binge.
00:11You know, come and immerse yourself in 16 hours of Wagner, and you go away different.
00:17It's a big, powerful experience.
00:26It's daunting. It's a mission.
00:30But, when you take on the mission, if you want to see all four operas in the ring, you take
00:35on this mission.
00:38You go through this process of being drawn into this incredible music.
00:48The experience of opera as fantasy, total fantasy, is what the ring provides.
00:54It's like any epic work, like the Lord of the Rings, or like Game of Thrones.
01:01It's the fantasy aspect of it that is really addictive.
01:08It's sort of like a plutonium version of Neighbors, I think, or EastEnders, really.
01:13Ultimately, underneath all the godliness, there are domestic stories.
01:17I dare to say that we all have met someone from the ring in real life.
01:24These different characters and these different situations, greed, power, love, betrayal, is laid out in such a brilliant way in
01:35the ring.
01:36It just sucks you in.
01:38I think there's something sort of deep within us that also connects with it.
01:42And I think it's that combination of this ancient storytelling of gods and dwarfs and giants, and the very fact
01:50that the music is just immensely powerful.
01:53With a piece like this, I think you just have to be brave and go for it.
02:02People who think that they don't like opera, they should go and watch the ring.
02:11The music has everything, really.
02:13One of the most beautiful to the most brutal and subtle and the end of the world.
02:19You cannot top that.
02:20If you take on the ring as a project that you're going to get involved in,
02:26the Opera North ring production makes it very accessible to dive into this experience of Wagner's fantasy world
02:35and this overwhelming music.
02:39It floods over you.
02:41You're inundated by it.
02:43And you should feel slightly drowned by the time you finish the ring cycle,
02:50because you should be so full with all the ups and downs of this huge journey
02:54that it's so worth taking on the challenge.
02:58You're welcome.
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